Bruce Wayne sees an end in sight for his caped crusading as his and Lieutenant Gordon’s plans to clean Gotham of mob influence starts to bear fruit. New District Attorney Harvey Dent is backing them up all the way through the legal system but all of them have overlooked, in favour of the bigger mob fish, a single criminal who will plunge Gotham into new depths of terror and whose amorality cannot be fathomed by the mob, the law or Batman. His simple anachronistic name is Joker.

9/10

Director Christopher Nolan has made an extraordinarily intense and deep crime drama which just so happens to feature a dude in a bat costume. Together with the late Heath Ledger he has redefined super-villainy. What makes Joker so genuinely horrifying is Nolan’s complete pushing of Batman into the real world. Nolan makes entirely clear that an utterly amoral super-villain would be unspeakably terrifying, more terrifying than the opponent whose motives we can at least try to understand. Men and men’s systems simply can’t cope; we need something higher, something untouchable, something supremely powerful. Gotham needs Batman more than ever before but, because of public misconception, Gotham will believe that they don’t want him and that he isn’t helping. Readers of the Bible may recognise these themes. Despite the lengthy runtime which could have been easily withstood the removal of Batman’s unnecessary 3D sonar imaging system, this is a great movie (instantly #1 on IMDb) though, be warned, the remarkable sense of terror and menace and depth of character and subject mean that this is very much an adult film and not a typical PG13 / 12A action movie.

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